VF: Your article
appeared in the Yemen Times before you started posting your comments
on Ethioindex’s Medrek forum. Another commentator, Yahya al-Olfi,
also wrote on the Yemen Times with the title “Yemeni Africans, the
Untold Story”. In that article, the scholar listed the Amhara, Tigre
and Afar peoples as Yemeni settlers in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Ethiopian history teaches that whereas the Amhara and Tigre are
Semitic peoples, the Afar are Cushitic people, as are the Oromo,
Sidama, Somali, and so on. Apparently, there is some conflict here.
What is your view on this?

Prof: Well, I am
responsible for what I say, not the approaches of other people, even
colleagues within the same newspaper. First, I prefer the term
‘Yemenite’ to the term ’Yemeni’, and I have published in this
regard. Second, we know that both, Amhara and Tigray, emanate from
the environment of Axum, Axumite Abyssinia. The name itself of
Abyssinia, Habasha, has been attested in Ancient Yemenite, ‘South
Arabic’ as many Western scholars say, inscriptions as ‘Habashat’,
the name of a tribe. So, certainly one can say that the Amhara/Tigray/Axumite
Abyssinians originate from the ancient Yemenite, Semitic but not
Arabic, cultural – linguistic milieu. Let me add at this point in
this regard that I reject the term ‘South Arabic’ / ’Sudarabique’
for what concerns Pre-Islamic Yemen. The appropriate term is
‘Ancient Yemenite’.

The Afar people
did not come from Yemen, or if you want, we have not a single
indication in this regard. You say, let me quote you, ‘,
the Afar are Cushitic people, as are the Oromo, Sidama, Somali, and
so on’. This is terminologically wrong. All the people you mention,
Afar, Oromo, Sidama and Somali belong to the great Khammitic
linguistic group that encompasses many subgroups, namely the Berbers
of the Atlas area, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, who speak Tamazigh,
a language that is written through use of an old scripture, the
Haussa and Peul / Fulani of the Western African countries from
Senegal to Nigeria, the Kushites of Eastern Africa. Oromos are
Kushitic certainly, and there is vast Kushitic substratum in the
area of Ancient Egypt and Sudan. As far as the Afar and the Somalis
are concerned, I believe we can certainly classify them among the
Khammitic peoples, but I am not sure they truly belong to the
Kushitic subgroup. Of course, they are not Semitic; I disagree with
this approach.

VF: You also
wrote in the Yemen Times that “Habasha, Abyssinia, is a very
beautiful name, and Abyssinians need not to think that they may
shine to the Western eyes more impressively through use of the term
Ethiopia.” Isn’t Habasha associated with half-caste? And if that is
the case, why do you think the name Abyssinia is very beautiful?

Prof: Well, that
sentence disturbed or at least intrigued many. It is a figure of
speech that admittedly implies a lot of concepts, ideas, and
approaches. Any name of a country, of a people, of an area is
beautiful! One must be proud of one’s own national or ethnic name.
Trying to hide behind a false name, usurping a national name that
belongs to a completely different environment, are sick, problematic
and finally disastrous policies. But you are right as well. Habasha
was associated with a kind of caste, but this is normal, since the
earlier homonymous group was an emigrant tribe that became the
ruling class of the small Axumite kingdom at the northern confines
of the present day Abyssinia and in the coast between Adulis and
Avalites, which correspond to present day Massawa and Assab.

I say that the
name is beautiful because I admit that, following various
emigrations from Yemen to Axum, already in the pre-Christian periods
of the Ancient Abyssinia, a significant civilization was developed
in that part of Africa. After the christening of the country, an
important monophysitic Christian cultural environment was developed
there, and Abyssinia, along with the Copts of Egypt, who belonged to
the Roman Empire, and the three Christian states of Sudan, Nobatia,
Makkuria and Alodia, gave a distinct, African, dimension to the
phenomenon of Christianity.

Of course, it
would be pure naivety to search for innocence throughout History.
All the ‘important’ states, countries, and peoples that developed
civilization as we say, were oppressors of other peoples, and
tribes, made unjust wars, committed crimes, and executed policies
mostly characterized by discrimination, barbarism and criminality!
Have no doubt about it! When we speak about World civilization, we
use a very conventional term. But we must admit realities within
that context.

Now, within any
nation, all sorts of debates and reconsiderations or reassessments
can happen. Any people can reconsider part of its past and, through
an appropriate and well cultivated change, bring about a fresh, more
human face. Germany did so after WW II. Admitting the commitment of
a mistake, or understanding the limits and/or the inefficiencies of
a certain national ‘face’ or ‘portrait’ is a great act that
testifies to the strength of the national dynamics, to the force of
renovation within the people in question, and so on!

If the development
of the education, the economic growth, the diffusion of democratic
political practices, and the intellectual endeavors are great within
a country, then certainly the political – academic – intellectual
establishment of the country will take the appropriate decisions in
this regard. If a country has expanded up to the point of including
neighboring peoples, annexing other lands, and enlarging the
original surface, and at the same time this country reaches the
aforementioned level of development, the country’s political
establishment will be driven to the correct conclusions and the
appropriate decisions. Many languages will have to be considered as
official, political rights must be extended to all, cultural
divergences must be incorporated into a larger context, the ‘face’
of the country must change in a way to be always representative, and
even the name must change. France mobilized its resources in order
to unify first another five countries, and later even more, but
France would have completely failed from the beginning, if the
French had insisted in keeping the name France instead for Europe.

In our world,
representation and equity, equal right to everybody, have the same
importance as freedom. Either you adopt this mentality, adapt to the
new global environment, and cope with the rest, who also undergo
many changes, or you die.

What I meant in
the case of Abyssinia was precisely this:

-
either be frank enough to admit that you rule the country
tyrannically for the interest of the Amhara tribe, and then be happy
with naming your country ‘Abyssinia’, since the Abyssinian minority
dictatorially imposes its language and culture, religion and
behavioral system as the predominant elements and characteristics of
the country,

-or,
if you want to call it ‘Ethiopia’, make the name correspond to the
contents, accept the Oromo language as the only official language of
the country, and stop preventing through undemocratic measures the
Oromo people from controlling the political life of the country and
the executive power, since they are the real majority.

In other words,
only when the real representative of the name ‘Ethiopia’ will
exercise power in that country, the country should be called like
that. Amhara tyrannical and archaic rule and ‘Ethiopia’ as the name
of the country is an oxymoron that perpetuates the dysfunctional
character of a country that leads the world in misery, pestilence,
poverty, starvation, plague, and death! I do not believe that the
majority of the unhappy citizens of that country deserve such an
ignominious destiny.

VF: You have
written in one of your articles on the Yemen Times that Yemen’s
history goes back to pre-Islamic and pre-Christian times. How
important are pre-Christian and pre-Islamic histories to you? In
some ways, isn’t the world going back to the pre-Christian and
pre-Islamic times in terms of the search for the root identity,
their olive trees, as your writings suggest? Some people argue that
six thousand years of Judeo-Christian-Islam history ended in 1969 by
the landing of man on the moon. What is your opinion?

Prof: For the
countries, the peoples, the ethnic groups that have a part of
History that antedates their Christian/Islamic Ages, automatically
that part becomes the most authentic, the most genuine, the most
determinant, the most preponderant part of their entire History. You
may ask me now why this is like this. I will tell you and I will
examine with you several examples.

The reason
behind this statement of mine is not that my field is Ancient
History. In reality what happened in the Antiquity, from Sumer to
Rome, en passant by Egypt, Phoenicia, Anatolia/Turkey, Iran, India,
Yemen, Sudan, Greece, NW Africa, Eastern Africa, is that the local
civilization in every case developed characteristics that were very
genuine and very particular to every people. During those days,
there was certainly an influence, an impact of one people, culture,
civilization, on another. But, at the same time, there was also a
very strong character of proper and adequate incorporation of the
various new elements that were coming from outside. This is due to
the fact that nature was an important ingredient of the composition
of the civilization to a great extent. We cannot imagine Mesopotamia
without vast surface between and around the twin rivers of Euphrates
and Tigris. But Egypt is very different; it is narrower and longer.
Anatolia and Iran mean mountainous plateau and cold winter. Greece
means view of a few islands from the continental coast, or from an
island. How many coastal places do you know in Greece from where you
cannot see an island at all, and your view is lost in the horizon?
Very few! But from the coast of Lebanon your view is lost in the
western horizon! So, these environments made the Greeks different
than the Phoenicians, the Egyptians different than the Assyrians.
The more we study the topography of two ancient civilizations, the
more we identify reasons for further variety, and differentiation.

Hesiod truly
copied the Assyrian/Babylonian epic of the Creation (‘Enuma Elish in
Assyrian/Babylonian means ‘when high’ and the epic starts by these
two words) in his Theogonia (Genesis of Gods) but, if you read
Theogonia, you recreate an Ancient Greek environment, not
Mesopotamia; this means adequate incorporation of a foreign element,
adaptation. During those times, the basic perception of the world
was mythical, and the mythical expression respects the natural
environment much more than the rational expression.

When at the
times of the Late Antiquity we reach at the level of systematization
of religions, cults and ideologies into rational/mythical systems of
thought, the so-called Gnosticisms, then we achieve that a concept,
an idea, an ideology can be diffused in another country and among
other people without adequate incorporation into the new
environment. In such case it remains as projection of the original
environment. Christianity emanated from the environment of
Gnosticisms. Islam presents striking similarities with a Gnostic
system, Hermetism. Accordingly, Christianity and Islam brought the
natural environment of the deserts of Judea and Arabia to Europe,
India, everywhere they were spread out.

Through all
this, you can understand what is authentic as character for a Turk
today is the Hittite/Anatolian behavioral system, for an Iranian it
is his/her Achaemenid – Sassanid past, for a Greek it is Ancient
Greece, and for an Egyptian the Pharaonic periods.

The
Judeo-Christian-Islamic past does not go beyond 1200 BCE, covering
therefore just 3000 years. What do we know of Abraham? A few pages
of text, be it Coranic, Evangelic, or Old Testamentary. This line
represents a very wrong schematization of the Oriental History.
Without the Assyrian Babylonian Ut Napishtim, there would never have
been the Biblical – Coranic Noah. There is so much of Ancient
Egyptian monotheism and aniconic ideology in the Bible and in the
Coran that no one can interpret today the three aforementioned
religions properly without Egyptology, to give you just one example.
Without Akhenaten’s religion there would never have been a certain
Moses – Musa.

Without the
concept of Etana – Messiah of the Assyrian/Babylonian sources, and
without the identification of Assurbanipal of Assyria (669 – 625)
with the Messiah – Mahdi, as a first appearance heralding a second,
ultimate one, there would never be so many Messiahs, Christs, and
Mahdis…

What is the
longer and more original text about the fight between the Messiah
and the Anti-Christ at the End of Time? Certainly it is the lengthy
Hieroglyphic composition of the temple of Horus (the Egyptian
Messiah) at Edfu, Upper Egypt. The book of the Revelation is short,
abridged… In addition, this book of the New Testament almost copies
word-by-word expressions of the Hittite Book of Revelation that
described the Ultimate Fight, Tasmisu against Ullikummi. The ‘Beast
rising from the Sea’ is the first reference within the World
Literature to the Hittite Anti-Christ, Ullikummi, 1400 years before
John is bestowed with the keys to the originality of the secret
Hittite thought to which modern decipherment offered us access
again! Ullikummi antedates his latest copy, i.e. Masih Dajjal, the
Islamic Anti-Christ by 2000 years. That is not ‘yesterday’, you
know.

Even more, in
Egyptian and Assyrian/Babylonian sources of theological contents we
have more literature on a more … difficult subject that Judaic,
Christian and Islamic philosophy and theology tried not to tackle:
What was God doing before the Creation? How was it then?

Landing on the
moon did not have any consequence and did not change anything in
this regard. It was already known as possible to Lucian, and more
recently to Jules Verne. Man on the moon is depicted on a Phoenician
relief…

VF: When you
started writing about Abyssinia, a careful reading of your comments
suggests that you were in a way advising Abyssinian political
establishment in a positive way to face the truth and chart a better
course for the future. It seems many participants from Abyssinian
side chose not to listen well and you ended up being viewed as their
adversary. Do you agree with this assessment?

Prof: Yes, that
is plain truth! I have no problem with any state in the world. I
reject totalitarian regimes, but before expressing an advice, I do
not start arguing. These participants you refer to may live very
tragic circumstances in their psychic world, and if things continue
like this in Abyssinia, they will face even worse situations at the
level of social participation and national politics.

VF: As a follow
up to the previous question, you remind me about the Habasha person
with his Gabi in North America during the summer (Gabi is similar to
a scarf, which is made of cotton and much wider that covers the
whole body above the knee). If one helps him to put it down, he
resists or his best relatives tend to put it back on him, as a
reflection of culture, not realizing how uncomfortable his dress is
in this climate of rationality. It seems you tried to take off the
Gabi from them by bringing out the truth, but there was stiff
resistance in the way of insulting than in the way of genuinely
debating on your ideas. Did you have similar observation?

Prof:
Absolutely! The matter is not that simple however! I attempted to do
so on several occasions and within various contexts: Greece, Turkey,
Islam, Europe, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, and Abyssinia! It is a
persistent case! You may ask me why I proceed so, of course!
Anticipating the question, I will answer right away! Large part of
the world is currently under colonial domination, exploitation and
manipulation, without any chance of disentanglement, innovation, and
reassessment of the past and the present, without any truly free,
unbiased, choice for the future. The colonial rule lies on large
part on a perverted manipulation and subtle maneuver through which
the 'third world', the domain of the engulfed and exploited masses
of Latin America, Africa and most of Asia, sticks to its traditions,
while trying to mix part of them with a badly understood and
perceived modernity. This is precisely the trickery. Though the
western disciplines of Humanities the colonial rulers are easily
maneuvering the situation without the colonized masses and
governments, academia and intellectuals understanding!

In reality a
tradition emanates from an entire cultural environment to which this
tradition consists in an indispensable, organically linked, part.
But this entire cultural environment as a living expression of
living human beings changes, undergoes various reassessments, can
reach a universal peak in its rise, or can get disintegrated totally
and irreversibly; this last situation means that the civilization in
question ceases to exist. A civilization can also undergo a long
lasting decay. When the decay is there, the various elements of the
'entire cultural environment' cease to have a real meaning, becoming
therefore meaningless acts and/or beliefs without any real value.
This is the Physics of the Civilizations. Nothing can revivify a
disintegrated, meaningless, act or belief in such a case; it is a
clinically dead element.

Now, if a
foreign power manipulates the administration of a people in decay in
a way to lead the unfortunate decadent people to stick to the dead
element, any sort of traditional act or belief, it is guaranteed
that the people in question – or the intellectual class of this
people, or at least some of that class' members/elements – loses
completely the last chance of distancing from the marshes of
cultural stagnation and decadence, and of reassessing/reconsidering
the entire situation. By sticking to the dead element, the people in
question cannot revivify either the element itself or the original
'entire cultural environment'. Simply, these people are stuck more
and more to the marshes of decadence, becoming therefore a pathetic
imitator of foreign elements, cultures, behavioral systems,
civilizations. The situation becomes worse when the thought surfaces
among the decadent and besotted – through the foreign cultural and
educational interference – that a successful marriage of its own
culture with the colonial expanding culture can be carried out! The
ensuing barbarism consists basically in an obnoxious and
uncontrolled mixture of

a collapsing culture of
which none among the people it expresses has a mastership,
understanding and real assessment, and

an expanding, and yet not
truly understood, foreign, colonial culture that is used as a
means of domination by the colonial country over the decadent
people.

In such a
situation, the tradition we started speaking about, the dead element
that originates from an earlier 'entire cultural environment' that
does not exist anymore, must be deleted, eradicated and forgotten.
From these people one must remove the Gabi you are talking about,
from Muslims the hedjab (veil) and the useless prayer must be
uprooted, so that all the decadent peoples and cultures be forced
either to ultimate original thought and reassessment of their
situation (as well as of the world affairs) or to final death.

VF: Some Amharic
metaphors and common names tell something unique about the Amhara
people’s culture. For example, one metaphor in Amharic goes sewun
mamun qabro newu, which roughly means trusting a person is after
burying him/her. Some common names are Gizachew, which means
rule them, Getachew, their master, and so on. Do the metaphor
and names suggest to you a culture of suspicion and fear?

Prof: Abyssinian
– Amhara – culture is the expression of the Semitic people that
dwells in the limited, marginal, mountainous area of Gondar around
Lake Tana. The Christian Abyssinian kingdom of Axum pursued
expansionist policies in the very beginning, invaded Ethiopia, that
is present day Sudan, in 370 CE and destroyed its capital Meroe,
where still today one finds many dozens of pyramids and mortuary
temples for the 'Qore' and the 'Kandake", the Ethiopian kings and
Queens. Later and within the context of an alliance with the Eastern
Roman Empire, Axumite Abyssinia attacked Yemen and attempted to find
a way for its ally at Constantinople to contravene the Sassanid
Iranian control of the Eastern trade (with India, Eastern Africa,
and China). Of course, the Iranian supremacy was such that they
kicked the Abyssinians out of Yemen, the Abyssinians’ original land
to which they had returned as invaders, and annexed Yemen,
strangling therefore the Eastern Roman Empire with heavy taxes and
customs. Soon after that came the Islamic explosion. Not only Axum
lost all its chances to come back to Yemen, but the Eritrean coast
was permanently cut off, and the Abyssinian state was isolated from
its derailed ally at Constantinople that had lost all its provinces
in Africa and all its Asiatic possessions at the east of Taurus
mountains (that separate Anatolia, present day Turkey, from Syria)
and the upper flow of Euphrates.

To address the
situation, the also isolated Christian kingdoms of the Sudan,
Nobatia, at the North with capital at Faras near Wadi Halfa, and
Makkuria at the center with capital at Old Dongola, 600 km in the
south of Faras, merged. They were able to survive without many
contacts with the Caliphate that controlled Egypt – first, in the
7th c., not further than Assiut in the south, and without any
control of the Red Sea; the Saharan roads of trade with the Western
Africa world around river Niger permitted unified Nobatia /Makkuria
to stand until the 12th century. Contrarily to the Sudanese
Christian state, Axum collapsed, since the vicinity of the coast,
the Islamic supremacy in the coast, and the lack of connection with
other parts of Africa predestined it to be doomed for many long
centuries. The transfer of the capital at Gondar, and the medieval
rise of the Abyssinian kingdom came after a long period of decay.
Even then the feeling of having lost to Islam, and of having been
defeated and isolated, as the Western legend of the 'kingdom of
Priest John' lets us surmise, created a cultural, behavioral system
that has nothing to do with imperial behavior, abundance, knowledge,
science, exploration, expansion, research, culture, wealthy life,
spectacles, grandeur of art and of royal manners, and all the
ensuing majestic environment. Axum and Gondar Abyssinia was focused
on a mere survival, a hard effort to preserve as a hysterical
opposition to Islam the monophysitic perception of Christianity that
was rejected by Constantinople and Rome with the same vigor by which
also Nestorianism (the diametrically opposed to Monophysitism
Christian theology) was denounced. I say 'hysterical opposition'
because I understand that to anything in this world one can expect
always a 'positive' or 'constructive' opposition. But this was not
the case in this regard.

To go straight
to the heart of your question I understand that the conversion of
numerous Abyssinians into Islam brought a long period of
obscurantism and backward situation in the country. Most probably
the outright majority of the intellectuals and artists, erudite
scholars and learned wise men adhered to Islam early. It is quite
indicative that, when the illustrious Caliph Maamun contacted kings
throughout the world in the second half of the 8th
century, in his particular effort to collect manuscripts and
parchmins, and to make of Abbasid Baghdad the universal epicenter of
the learned world, he did not contact anyone in Abyssinia. There was
nothing important left there…You understand that, by saying this, I
do not imply that Gueze literature is insignificant, but I assert
that the most representative specimens had already been taken away
from Axum by the Abyssinian intellectuals who were converted to
Islam.

There was no
domain of knowledge left in the tiny state of Abyssinia after the
rise of Islam. What were left there were a limited political
continuity, and an insistence on religious traditions that had been
shaken by the explosion of Islam, and by the conversion of many
Abyssinians to the faith that challenged Christianity. From these
basic characteristics emanate the suspicion and the fear you ask
about.

VF: Abyssinians
have intermingled with Africans, perhaps with Oromos more than with
any other people. Few Amharas may have no trace of Oromo or other
African people. Even the Amhara rulers including the 16th
century emperors in Gondar are rumored to have Oromo trace. If you
talk to an Oromo farmer in Macha, western part of Oromo country, he
tells you that after seven generations, Godgam, a province of Amhara
state, becomes Oromo. Some theory goes that the Amhara people were
formed from Oromo and Tigre armies of the ruling class in the late
13th century as a result of the former’s rebellion to the
latter. This story goes that the Amharic language was created to
confuse the ruling class in this rebellion. In the early 1990’s,
some Amhara scholars including Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, founder
of the Ethiopian Human Rights Organization, argued that there are no
people called Amhara. In fact, some people believe that many Amharas
are Kush’s
children. Some genetic evidence (see Figures 1 and 2) also puts
certain genetic trait frequency of the Amhara people close to that
of the Oromo, and interestingly, both similar to the Greeks. We can
also compare the number of Amhara and Tigre people,
which is estimated to be about 32% of Ethiopia’s population, with
that of Yemen. Ethiopia’s current population is roughly about 70
million, which puts the Amhara and Tigre peoples’ number at roughly
22 million. On the other hand, according to a July 2004 estimate,
the total population of Yemen is about 20 million. If we assume that
most of Yemen’s citizens are Yemeni and that the growth rates on
both sides of the Red Sea have been comparable since the migration,
it seems that one out of two people from Yemen migrated to Africa.
That seems to be unlikely since migrants are generally much lower in
number than the people left behind. So, doesn’t it appear that the
people who are called Amhara are more Oromo or African than they are
Yemeni?

Figure 1. Correspondence analysis showing a global view of the
relationship between
Mediterranean and sub-Saharan and Black African populations
according to HLA allele

Figure 2. Correspondence analysis showing a global view of the
relationship among West
Mediterranean (green), East Mediterraneans (orange), Greeks and
sub-Saharan populations
(red) and
Blacks (gray) according to HLA allele frequencies in three
dimensions
(bidimensional representation). HLA-DR and DQ (low-resolution)
allele frequencies data
(adapted from
Arnaiz-Villena, 2000, HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan
origin
of the
Greeks).

Prof: No, I
totally disagree with the last point, but you asked me many things
altogether. There is no proof for an artificial construction of the
Amharic language. Both, Tigrinya and Amharinya emanate from Gueze
but with several differences due to diverse intermingling, and to
the isolation phenomenon. You know Portuguese and Spanish, and
Tigrinya and Amharic are equidistant from one another, and yet
before 1000 years there was neither Portuguese and Spanish in the
Iberian Peninsula nor Tigrinya and Amharic in the Abyssinian
plateau. There was certainly an intermingling with other people,
Afar, Oromo, etc. But we have so little information about that and
we cannot deduce concrete, imperative conclusions.

Prof.
Woldemariam may have democratic sensitivity and be a Human Rights
activist, which is to his credit certainly, but he is a fully
accredited member of the Amhara ruling class. As such, he expresses
– through his papers and contributions – the Amhara political,
cultural, ideological and financial interests.

To say that
Amhara and Tigray peoples are Kushitic, so therefore Khammitic and
not Semitic, is an aberration. There is no case to convince any
serious specialized scholar in the world by saying this. What
happened to these supposedly Kushitic peoples and they speak
suddenly today totally Semitic languages as Amharic and Tigrinya?
Who semitized them linguistically and later … disappeared? None, of
course! I must add that it would be even worse error to say that
Axumite Abyssinians and Gueze speaking people were Kushitic as well!

All this
testifies to Amhara paranoia and incredible fear of losing the
political – financial – ideological control over a country that
apparently is not theirs, and a vast area of which they have been
150-year occupying tyrants. It is a provocative alteration of
history that we have all to denounce as a colonial scheme. The
entire problem is the existence and the tyrannical control Amhara
people exercise outside the province of Amhara; yet, that province
is their realm, there they must stay. To perpetuate their illegal
and colonial control of the Oromo country they entered into the
colonial scheme that I will describe to you briefly.

A) The name
'Ethiopia' represents an older, greater, more enlightening, more
appealing, more meaningful to Westerners, and better documented past
than the name 'Abyssinia'.

B) The real
rightful users of such a name are the oppressed Kushitic peoples of
Abyssinia, the Oromo, the Sidama and others.

C) So, ‘we’ will
eradicate the name of Abyssinia, and we will diffuse the theory that
Amhara are Ethiopians as well, renaming the country as 'Ethiopia'.

I want to stress
in the most categorical way here that I do not claim that they had
the originality of this thought! This colonial perversion belongs
exclusively to French, English and Italian historians, in their
efforts to address demands of their colonial diplomats and
politicians. But the Amhara people’s uncultured and uneducated
political class fell victim to such a trap!

This led them to
hate themselves and their own identity, the Abyssinian identity from
which they – by themselves – have been stripped off! A terrible case
of a self-inflicted disaster! The result was more than 100 years of
Abyssinian misery, poverty, tyranny, pestilence, starvation, and
death. The Oromos were not fooled by this ludicrous argumentation!
Because the Amhara rulers are besotted enough to think that it is
possible to press a button and become Chinese, or Kushitic, this
does not imply that they have the right to rule a country of which
they do not represent more than a sectarian 20%! It is as
provocatively idiotic as it would be for 1 million Mongolians to
announce "we are Chinese; let us rule 1 billion Chinese now"!

There is an
essential question one may advance at this point; why did the
invading Abyssinians of the 19th century not try to
expand Amhara culture, Abyssinian culture, among the people they
invaded? Well, they attempted it through the imposition of Amharic
as the only official language in the country, but they failed and
they realized their failure. This phenomenon is due to the fact that
Oromo culture and Sidama culture are superior to Amhara, and I
employ this term on this occasion in the sense of 'alive'. You must
not limit it among these peoples only, since Afar and Ogadeni are
equally concerned. It has to do with what we discussed earlier.
Amhara – Abyssinian – Axumite culture is dead; what one may see
among them is the permanence of some dead stereotypic elements of
the Abyssinian culture that are the crumbs of Axum. In the case of
Oromo, the traditional pastoral system that was formed after this
Kushitic people settled in the pasturelands of the Oromo country
survived to far greater extent.

The Amhara
Abyssinia must truly be a hell of fanaticism, barbarism, fear and
hatred. They seem to forget that the entire country shifts to Islam,
and they do not know how to react. You can change a national name,
shift from Abyssinia to Ethiopia, but you cannot pursue such tactics
with regard to religion.

I want to
discuss another point of your question. You attempted to make an
equation, i.e. 20 million Amhara and Tigray people originating from
Yemen vs. 20 million Yemenites, and then ask how they represent the
same number of population since the former were just a small tribe
that left Yemen at a time it did not constitute even 5% of the
Ancient Yemenite population. Well, things that happen in History are
very different from Mathematics.

I could say that
why Tunisians, who are the descendants of Carthaginians, who in
their turn left their city, the famous Tyr of Phoenicia, being just
a tiny part of its population, outnumber the present day Lebanese,
who are descendants of almost all the Ancient Phoenician cities –
states, not just of Tyr (present day Sur). One can repeat endlessly
this concept in many numerous cases.

What makes the
difference is the various trajectories followed by two different
peoples. You know, at the eve of WW I Germany had 88 million people
and France 44 million people. Why now, only 90 years later, Germans
are just 82 m and French are 60 m people? The answer is easy:
'different trajectory'. Greece had the same population as Yemen in
1960, but now Yemen has almost double the Greek population!

You cannot
therefore compare the isolated in the Abyssinian inland Amhara and
Tigray with the exposed Yemenites, famous seafarers on the shoulders
of whom lies all the legendary Islamic maritime tradition from trade
to tale. From the Eastern coast of Africa to India, Sri Lanka,
Indochina, Indonesia and China, plus the entire Red Sea area when we
are talking 'Islamic thalassocracy', a phenomenon that lasted many
centuries, we mean mainly Yemenites, and to lesser extent – and in
later periods – Persians. In the same way, in the Mediterranean,
Phoenicians, Alexandrian Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and Greeks
converted to Islam (rather known as Turks, since very few Muslim
Turks arrived in the 5th Islamic century to the area of Anatolia,
present day Turkey that is the Asiatic part of the Eastern Roman
Empire, and it is mostly the local Greek speaking population that
adhered gradually to Islam) affirmed the Islamic maritime
superiority for more than 1000 years. You cannot ask similar
questions, when you have migrations of all sorts. Spaniards are just
40 million people but how many millions of Latin Americans are the
descendants of Spaniards, who left Spain and settled in the 'New
World'! Yemenites are present in significant numbers in Abbasid
Baghdad, Iran, Arabia, the Indian coast, and Eastern Africa; even in
China there was an 'Arabic district' in several historical harbors,
and when we say 'Arabic' in this case, we mean exclusively
'Yemenite', since Arabs never had maritime tradition.

VF: The previous
question was referring to some sections of Amharas only. Certainly
there are Amharas that are Semitic. And the fact that Tigres are
Semitic is not in dispute. As far as the numbers go, in some ways,
we are talking about what happened in recent tumultuous times versus
what may have happened since the Abyssinians started migrating to
East Africa. Another point we need to explain is the fact that
Amharinya is more recently developed language compared to Tigrinya
and since the number of Amharas is at least twice as much as Tigres
in both Ethiopia and Eritrea combined, isn’t it intuitive that Tigre
Abyssinians would be naturally larger in number than Amhara
Abyssinians?

Prof: Tigres are
Semitic as well. They look closer to the Axum times Gueze. They
lived separately from Amharas for centuries, were not included in
the Gondar kingdom, and this signifies a different trajectory.
Tigres were more exposed to Islam, so I do not understand why it is
strange that Amhara outnumber them. Again different population
growth does not give the key to important historical issues and to
linguistic matters. The grammatical structure in both cases is
absolutely Semitic, irrespective of the various degrees of ethnic
and tribal intermingling.

VF: Abyssinians
wrongly refer to other peoples in Ethiopia as Habashas. After your
comments, it was evident that some Habasha participants declared
“from now on I am an Ethiopian”, thus distancing themselves from
Habasha. Even many Oromos are not conscious about the exact meaning
of Habasha and refer to themselves as such. Obviously, the culture
of believing in mythology than reality is far too common in
Abyssinia. In this sense, the peoples in Ethiopia under the
influence of Abyssinian ruling class may have been living in their
Dark Age, and when they face the truth, they show the tendency for
some change. Did you feel that this era may be the beginning of the
Kushitic and Abyssinian peoples’ Renaissance in the Horn of Africa
region? And if yes, do you feel that your comments are making a
contribution towards that?

Prof: It is an
aberration if Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians call other peoples
living in Abyssinia 'Abyssinians' or 'Habasha'. The only modern
Habasha, as continuation of the Semitic Yemenite tribe Habashat the
name of which we find in Ancient Yemenite epigraphic documentation
of the second half of the first millennium BCE, are the Amharinya
and Tigrinya speaking people of Abyssinia and Eritrea. The Oromo
people must mobilize their resources to search about their link with
the great Kushitic past, the great Ethiopian state at the area of
the present day Sudan, to retrace the connection with the area of
their origin, and to identify the Oromo National Heritage in a
pertinent way. They must also seek their link and connection with
some people among those living in the neighboring Sudan. Efforts,
endeavors and various issues must not be isolated one from another,
and must be left only within the frame of collapsing Abyssinia.
Great perspectives for culture, education, and politics must be
engaged everywhere Oromo communities live. For too long, Darkness
prevailed in the entire area from Sudan to Mozambique; there were
indigenous and there were colonial reasons to it. Now, light must
prevail, human rights must prevail, Democracy must prevail, and a
conceptually rich search for the African Past and the African
Identity must be engaged. Many scholars from Africa, from America,
and from the non colonial world may be ready to help in this regard.
An authentically Kushitic new Oromo generation of intellectuals must
be formed to address many issues, from the needs of the Oromo nation
at all levels of an auto-determined administration to the African
rejection of the colonial inspiration bogus-historical dogma of
Greco-Romano-centrism. I feel most honored to contribute to this
direction of developments.